Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 20, 2008

Even as he was flying to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of protecting immigrant families, not dividing them.

He raised the issue again in a meeting Wednesday with President Bush, and later that day spoke in Spanish to the church's "many immigrant children." And when he ends his visit to New York today, he will be sent off by a throng of the faithful, showing off the ethnic diversity of American Catholicism.

The choreography underscores the importance to the church here of its growing diversity - especially its increasing Latino membership.

Of the nation's 65 million Roman Catholics, 18 million are Latino, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and they account for more than two-thirds of the new Catholics in the country since 1960.

Millions of other recent arrivals come from Asia and Africa. More and more parishes depend on priests brought from abroad to serve the flock.

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Benedict has calibrated his immigration stance with care, stating the need to protect family unity and immigrants' human rights, but pointedly avoiding any specifics of the American immigration debate, like the issue of whether to grant legal status to illegal immigrants.

Yet last week his visit quickly stirred the crosscurrents of the debate. His comments drew a rebuke from Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado who has been a leading opponent of illegal immigration.

Accusing the pope of "faith-based marketing," Tancredo said Benedict's comments welcoming immigrants "may have less to do with spreading the Gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church." Tancredo, a former Catholic who now attends an evangelical Christian church, said it was not in the pope's "job description to engage in American politics."

On the other side of the issue, some members of the Catholic hierarchy said they were shocked that on the same day that Benedict and Bush affirmed in a joint statement the need for a policy that treats immigrants humanely and protects their families, federal agents were conducting raids at five chicken plants. They arrested more than 300 immigrants accused of being illegal workers.

The timing was coincidental, immigration officials said, and it was not clear whether the pope had known about the arrests when he met with Bush. But the raids surprised some American Catholic leaders, who are often on the forefront of advocacy for immigrant rights.

"I was stunned," said Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, the nation's largest Roman Catholic diocese and one of the most Latino. "I just feel these raids are totally negative. I thought it was very inappropriate to do it in such a blatant way when the pope was coming, when he has been so outspoken in defending the rights of immigrants."

The American bishops have consistently backed legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants and expand legal avenues for immigrants to bring their family members from abroad.

They and other Catholic activists were among the most visible supporters of a broad bill, supported by Bush but not enacted by Congress last year, which included a path to legal status for 12 million illegal immigrants.

They took Benedict's statements last week as affirmation of their work. For while the immigration theme has been overshadowed during Benedict's trip by his denunciations of the sexual abuse scandal in the church, it was the second issue after the abuse cases that he addressed on the plane from Rome, when he responded to reporters' questions that were submitted in advance and picked by the Vatican.

The separation of families "is truly dangerous for the social, moral and human fabric" of Latin and Central American families, the pope told reporters aboard his plane.

The pope did not just send a message to the president and the public, he spoke to the bishops. In his private meeting with them Wednesday evening, he emphasized that recent newcomers to the United States are "people of faith, and we are here to welcome them," Mahony said.

The pope also dwelled on the negative impact of family separation. Several bishops took that as a direct reference to the impact of previous immigration raids and deportations, in which illegal immigrant parents were separated from spouses and children who were U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

"Obviously the Holy Father is not encouraging people to do anything illegal," Mahony said.

But the raids "do not serve as a deterrent," he said. "They simply create fear and uncertainty in our communities."